


we’ll welcome december with tireless hope

by imgoingtocrash



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Grandpa Tony Vibes, Light Angst, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony and Pepper build themselves a family, ironfam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: It takes Tony all of two seconds to think about the fact that it used to beMorganin his lap instead of his granddaughter,Peterabout to head off to college for the first time instead of Morgan, and he used to bother dyeing his hair instead of just leaving it all grey, god, who gave the world permission to keep spinning this fast?“Okay, yes, I love you both very much, can we be done with this now?”“Look, everyone, it’s Ebenezer Stark,” MJ calls, exposing what he’s feeling by calling attention to his avoidance techniques, the traitor. (He’s going to get her and Peter underallof the mistletoe later.)“I knew we shouldn’t have watchedA Christmas Carollast night,” Tony sighs. “Call 2005, they want their headline back.”Five Christmases with the slowly growing Stark-Potts family, plus one where Peter realizes they're his family too.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 48
Kudos: 403
Collections: Iron Dad Secret Santa 2019





	we’ll welcome december with tireless hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [addict_with_a_pen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/addict_with_a_pen/gifts).



> Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays! This lovely Christmas fic is a gift for [skatle-skootle-demon-noodle](https://skatle-skootle-demon-noodle.tumblr.com) on tumblr for the IronDad Secret Santa Exchange. They asked for: 1) Tony gazing softly at any of the kids or Pepper, 2) Any fluffy Iron Ship, or 3) Tony and Pepper arguing about dumb things (as they do). So I did all 3, because what's a Pepperony fic without bickering, and what's IronDad fluff if Tony's not being soft about his kids?
> 
> The title is from Snow by Sleeping At Last, a very appropriate winter song about being hopeful and soft and healing after hard times.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

**2006**

Pepper doesn’t know what to do. 

She’s worked for Tony for years now, so it shouldn’t be rocket science—it’s Christmas Eve, and she has Christmas Day off. She should just go down to his workshop, ask if he needs anything else, and head home to celebrate a quiet Christmas Eve with a good Hallmark movie and a box of Russel Stover chocolates all to herself. She can relax with the knowledge that this is the last she’ll see of him for twenty-four straight hours. (Though even that seems unlikely given the way he’s working through that bottle of scotch in his workshop at the moment.)

Tony in the workshop, morose and hitting the bottle hard on the night before Christmas. That’s the problem. 

Normally he’s fine to see and dismiss her when he’s feeling crappy, often purposefully sending her off in a huff to get her to back off of actually caring about him. He drinks a lot often, and she’s never treated it as more of a problem than it is to executing her job—she gets him home before he pukes or pisses all over himself and provides the Advil and obscure hangover cures until he can make his rescheduled meeting only an hour late. 

Most of the time, she’s content with being brushed off, at keeping things strictly professional. Sometimes they get along _too well_ and she starts to think…she wonders about what-ifs and maybes as if they’re anything more than that—like anything she could have with Tony would be more than a night, as if it’d be something real.

Still. They’re friends. Friend _ly_ , at least. She doesn’t want to completely ignore the fact that he’s taking this Christmas especially hard. It’s the fifteen year anniversary of his parents’ death, after all. Still, he deserves to grieve however he wants. Pepper didn’t know his parents, and some days she barely thinks she knows Tony. 

(She knows what it’s like to lose a parent early, though. Her father’s heart attack came during her freshman year of college, and she’d considered dropping out with how many times she went home for the weekend that year. She spent so much time comforting her mother or working shifts to make sure they got to keep the house instead of going to college parties or getting to really know her roommates. She knows the weight it all puts on your shoulders early, the responsibility.)

So, here she stands at the top of the stairs, uncharacteristically wringing her hands and wondering what the right choice is, here. She wants to be there for him, she’s just not sure how to do it. She doesn’t want to just leave him alone.

“Sir is requesting your presence, Miss Potts,” JARVIS announces. Pepper doesn’t startle at the AI anymore. Tony brought his assistant AI online a few years ago, and ever since the AI has been improving its capabilities at a rapid rate. Soon she worries it will be able to replace her job completely, scheduling Tony’s appointments and calling Happy when it all goes to hell in public instead of her.

Pepper doesn’t know if Tony looked at JARVIS’ cameras and saw her pacing around like an idiot or he simply wanted to know if she’d left without telling him, but either way she decides she’ll make a choice on being there for him in the moment. If he’s being a particular brand of jackass, she’ll probably leave him to his own devices, even though she knows it’s pushing her away. If he asks for her company…she’ll at least make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit in his sleep or something.

She descends the stairs to a scene similar to the one she saw when she last left him: he’s getting close to emptying his scotch, and there’s a brand new bottle lined up on his desk, his intent to start on it when the first is done clear. His monitors are busy, but Tony’s looking off into nowhere instead of paying attention to them. He does look up when he hears her punching in her entry code.

“Thought you would be gone by now.” He points at a holographic clock displaying the time—just past midnight. “It’s officially Christmas, you officially have license to get away from me for a while…”

She’s not sure how to respond, because she also thought she would be out the minute she allowed herself to drop her responsibilities, but here they are.

She makes a snap sort of decision—the kind of gut thing she rarely finds herself prone to, like walking into the CEO’s office and yelling about a quarterly budget mistake he wouldn’t take seriously until she’d practically pepper-sprayed Happy in the face for trying to stop her. It’s either going to work or it won’t.

She walks over to the drink cart in Tony’s office, grabbing a tumbler from the stack of them and returning to Tony’s desk and pouring herself two fingers. She holds out the glass, clinking it with the one in his hand. “Merry Christmas, Mister Stark.”

The look he gives her is certainly quizzical—she knows what it looks like when his gears start spinning, to see the genius behind the fits of madness that make her want to tear her hair out. It’s something close to that, but another emotion she might call awe, or his version of impressed, so very hard to earn. “Merry Christmas,” he replies a little woodenly, clearing his throat before tapping the rims of their tumblers together.

“You know Rhodey invited me to some party tomorrow?” she asks, before taking a sip of the scotch. She’s never been an amber liquor kind of girl, but she’s learned to choke it down and appreciate the flavors other people see in it.

“Like a date?” Tony asks, taking a more-than-generous swallow. “You think Rhodes has a thing for you?”

Pepper actually guffaws. “Please.”

“Ouch. Poor guy.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’re only friends because we both like ganging up on you so much. He’s a good man, that doesn’t mean I want to date him.”

“Good. I mean, you know, because it’d be weird. You two dating. I’d just go around puking all the time, ‘cause it would be awful.”

She’d call his tone jealous, but she has a pretty good bead on Tony. Committed relationships aren’t his bag. That might change one day in the very, very far future, but he’s certainly not going to start publicly bidding for her affection any time soon, no matter how much he might flirt. (If you could call their rapid back-and-forth flirting, anyway.)

“Of course, I only consider your opinions on who I date,” she replies sarcastically, hopping onto the side of his desk and making herself comfortable.

He watches with a little smirk. She’s thankful she doesn’t know what kind of things are going through his head. Probably something inappropriate.

“What are your plans? Opening your mountain of gifts? You could always join me, rain on Rhodey’s fancy party. Might be fun,” she offers.

She’s not sure exactly what she said—what gave it away, she supposes, but his smile drops, his gaze focused on his now empty glass instead of her.

“You don’t have to do this, Pep.” He doesn’t shorten her monicker often, so she knows he’s being serious.

“Do what?”

He tilts his head up at her, like she’s playing dumb and he’s not fooled. “Whatever it is you think I’m gonna do—you don’t have to stick around and keep me company, Pepper. I’ll be fine.”

She looks down, a little ashamed. That’s not exactly what she’d been trying to do—more protect him with the assumption he’d do something he wouldn’t be able to recover from. She knows better than anyone that he doesn’t have the healthiest or best decision making instincts in the world. Sometimes he needs help. That’s why he has her. “I don’t _have_ to be here, I wanted to.”

At that, his brow furrows, and he scoffs. The calculating, configuring look returns. “ _Why?_ ”

It’s so simple, to her. “Because I care about you, Tony.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence, her trying to communicate all that encompasses without making it seem like—well, something it’s not, can’t be. Him…taking that in, maybe. She hates that it wasn’t obvious to him, that she cares about him as a person, not just as her boss.

“Well, that’s—great. Okay, I appreciate it. But I hate mother-hen-ing, just ask Rhodey. I’ve been dealing with this particular pile of crap by myself for a long time now. I can take it.”

“That doesn’t make it easier.” He definitely senses her tone in that comment—that she’s been though something similar. She doesn’t talk about her family much, but he probably looked her up after she was promoted to his assistant. Maybe he already knows.

He just shrugs, in the end, getting up from his chair. If she didn’t know his tolerance, she imagines no one could tell he wasn’t stone cold sober. “It is what it is. No good bringing you down with me. Out with you, Potts.”

“Tony—“

“No, I’m serious. Shoo. JARVIS knows when to cut me off, and I might fall asleep before that. Rhodey will be here tomorrow for his present. Take your day off and enjoy not being forced to fulfill my every whim until Wednesday morning.”

“Christmas is— _today_ is Monday, Mister Stark. I will be here bright and early on Tuesday, as always.”

“I’ll be asleep, as always.”

The banter is easy to fall back into, but she knows she’s being herded to the door of the workshop, away from Tony and whatever he wants to keep from her.

She tries a last ditch effort. Just in case he’s looking for an out. “Will that be all, Mister Stark?”

“That’ll be all, Miss Potts.” He turns and waves her off, the matter closed. “Merry Christmas.”

Pepper looks back at him one last time, leaning against the open door, glad she tried, still feeling like maybe she hasn’t done enough. “Merry Christmas, Tony.”

**2012**

“I didn’t realize you were so serious about Christmas,” Pepper says while stepping over multiple cardboard boxes to get to her intended destination of the living room couch, attempting not to spill her glass of red wine in the process. It looks a bit like Tony bought out the entirety of one of those specialty Christmas stores, but he claims all of the decor littering the living room is from a storage unit that he’s apparently owned since his parents passed.

“Are you kidding me, Pep?” Tony asks, his body partially wrapped in a string of colorful Christmas lights that he’s been unknotting on the floor for the last ten minutes at least. “What about my yearly Christmas parties gave you that impression?” 

It’s true, the Stark Industries Christmas parties have always been seen as something of renown in business circles. They pass out juicy bonuses to the employees like they’re pocket change and more often than not, Tony—and by extension Pepper—end up staying until the last guest is walking out the door. There were years where she helped with the logistics of setting things up, but Tony had always taken special interest in the things he usually shoved off to others like picking the caterers, hiring the decorators, or selecting theme pieces.

Still, Pepper shrugs. “I know it’s a hard time for you, too.” What she doesn’t voice is that she’d always played this sort of mental game with Tony, wondering how much was real and how much was an act he put on for others. She’s figuring it out even better than before now that he’ll actually trust her with what he’s feeling instead of burying it all in hook-ups and alcohol.

Like, instead of the brush-off or eye-roll she expects in return, Tony stops fiddling with the lights long enough to look Pepper in the eye. “The season has its ups and downs for me. Mostly downs, as you know. But the party, it’s—it was my mom’s thing. It didn’t matter how many people my dad fired just for looking at him funny, how many people he scared the piss out of on the production floor every day. By Christmas-time, all anyone looked forward to was the party my mom planned.”

She puts down the wine glass on the coffee table, rewarding his honesty with her comfort, with touch. Pepper joins him on the floor, curling herself around his arm and leaning her head on his shoulder. “So all of this…?”

Tony nods, returning to his light bundle and jostling her head a little rhythmically as he goes. “She always did up the house, too. By hand. Hiring decorators to do it for me never sat right, after she died.” Tony smiles to himself, sad and a little sullen. “That first year after…I came home for break and broke some stuff—my grandmother’s nativity, handmade ornaments from when I was a kid. Rhodey found me covered in broken plastic and glitter and smelling like the bottle of cheap tequila I’d stashed in my bedroom before I went to MIT.”

She decides to do something productive while she’s listening, opening a box of ornaments with a flick of the aging tape keeping the two top flaps together. Inside is nothing like her own family ornament collection. 

Her mother was always good about keeping everything in neat little rows of matching colors or keeping the boxes for specialty pieces like some of her Snoopy collectables. In this box, there are haphazard little piles of paper separating what could be hundreds of ornaments. The usual round baubles are mixed in with a stack of plastic icicles and a felt Santa face that very well may be hand-sewn.

She examines a glass snowflake, recognizing it from the years she’d paced miles around his Christmas tree watching how certain ornaments would catch the light of the fireplace as she organized Tony’s meeting schedule for the moment the new year began. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was you, all this time. I always just came in and found the house decorated one day, so I assumed…”

“I snuck something by the great Pepper Potts? I’ll be damned,” Tony voices with playful pride.

She tries to smile, but finds herself chewing on her lip in thought, instead. “Did you feel like you had to?”

Sure, before things had gotten romantic, he was her boss. He wasn’t really obligated to tell her things like this. Still, he’d told her quite a lot. They’d been friends, too. It felt silly, but it stung, thinking there was something this important about him she didn’t know. She could rattle off his usual orders for takeout, his preferred brands of suit and tie, and, on a good day, predict his moods before he even uttered a word. But he’d been quietly celebrating his mother in this way for years, and she’d never imagined his decoration tastes were more than that: rustic tastes to highlight the classics. Not hand-me-downs from his family that he still treasured.

“Maybe. Before.” He kisses her cheek as if reading her train of thought before he stands, dragging along the green strand of lights and hiding them between the folds of the artificial pine tree’s limbs. “Not anymore.” She always wondered why he never sprung for the real thing, but she thinks she understands it, now. The tree itself—big, metal monstrosity that it is, some limbs completely bare of needles—is also an heirloom. 

She’ll be honest, she likes this side of him most. Tony stripped of his performative layers, hanging up handmade Christmas decorations in flannel pajama pants and an Iron Maiden t-shirt like this is his everyday instead of the hours he spends inventing technology that constantly blows the rest of the world out of the water.

And as he said, it’s something he only shows to her, most of the time. “That’s why you wanted to come back to Malibu, isn’t it?”

“Hm?” is his distracted reply. He’s started in on another rung of lights, begging to be electrocuted by wringing at a knot with his teeth instead of asking for her fingernails.

“You hired decorators for Stark Tower—even after I pointed out that we and Bruce were the only ones there to appreciate it—and then out of nowhere you said you wanted to spend Christmas in Malibu instead of New York.” It was one of the moments of her life where she gave in despite finding his usual reason of just wanting to do what he wanted to do on a whim ridiculous. She just told herself the Stark Industries offices on the West Coast could use her attention since they’d been based out of New York for so long, anyway, and he’d given her a look full of a warmth she wasn’t sure the decision deserved. It makes sense now. “You wanted me to do this with you.”

“Guess so,” is his nonchalant answer, completely butchered by his purposefully distracting action of picking at the lights being the most important thing he could be doing at this moment.

“Tony,” she sighs, touched but still shaking her head at the way he goes back and forth with opening up to her. One detail shared, another kept close to the vest. Scared that one day she’ll wake up and suddenly regret that he’s more open with her than he’s ever been, likely more than he’s ever been with anyone else except maybe Rhodey. 

She stands, placing her hand over his own on the string of lights and pulling his chin up with the other. She hasn’t undressed from her day at work completely, but the loss of her heels means he isn’t looking up at her as much as usual.

He sighs deeply, as if pained to admit this softness and sentimentality she’s known about all along. “Yeah. Yeah, I wanted—I mean, it’s you, Pepper. Even if Christmas isn’t really your thing, because it’s a capitalist trap or you have to visit your family or whatever, I just thought you might…” He shakes off the over-explaining, the talking around what he really wants to say, snapping his thoughts into clarity with the confidence that she’ll never mock him for showing himself to her so earnestly. “I wanted to decorate with you, this time.” 

And he doesn’t say it, but she knows, despite what everyone might say about Tony Stark—that he’ll never _really_ settle down, not like other men, that their relationship is a ticking time bomb waiting to snap at the next crisis despite the fact that it was built on meltdowns and finding each other in the fear, that he’s never known stability and doesn’t know what it means—that he means _this time_ and _next time_ , and _probably forever, because you’re the only person I’ve ever loved like this, you know that, you know_ me _, this is it_.

And somehow, without it being a proposal, with only two years of this relationship under their belts, with the fear of The Battle of New York still haunting them both in the dark: she wants to say yes to all of it.

Instead, she kisses him, her arm wrapping around his neck to pull him close, the bundle of lightsbetween them uncomfortably poking against her chest. “Thank you,” is what she says, unsure of how else to express how happy she is to be here in this home that feels like theirs now more than his alone because he’s letting her in, always pulling her a little closer than before, winding them together like the light strings into the branches.

“Love you,” he replies, pressing a kiss into her neck, understanding. They pull apart when she reaches a hand towards his hip and instead catches a handful of lights. Tony smiles a little sheepishly at the tangle still wrapped in his fists.

**2017**

“Tony,” Rhodey says, awe-struck tone in his voice clear despite Tony hearing it from the other side of the room. “Why is there a small child on your ceiling?”

“I’m sixteen!” Peter corrects from his place, as described, attached to the ceiling of the Stark Tower penthouse, hanging down as to place the ornate glass star at the top of their Christmas tree.

“Tony, you could’ve gotten the decorators to do that,” Pepper chides, because this intimate little Christmas Eve party is supposed to be a _party_ , after all. The whole reason they didn’t decorate this year is because—well, mostly because a lot of their personal decorations from years past are in the storage units in California or exploded with the old Malibu mansion. But also because Pepper is currently at a stalemate with her mother after a hellacious Thanksgiving, they’d both been dealing with meetings throughout December, and they just wanted a nice, quiet night with the whole family before the holiday was over.

Tony’s proud to have Peter as their most recent addition.

“Oh, no, he asked to do this,” Tony states, craning his neck like the rest of them to watch the spectacle. The kid is hanging upside down with his tongue sticking out, twisting the star just so until it holds still on the top branch. “When I told him we weren’t decorating by hand this year, he insisted that someone should at least put the star on the top themselves.”

“It’s tradition!” Peter says. He doesn’t bother to simply walk down the wall, but instead does a little flip, the landing of which causes Rhodey to jump half a foot in the air next to Pepper with a quiet _“What the fuck.”_

“Language,” Tony half-heartedly jibes. “Spider-Baby, you’re gonna break my Rhodey if you keep at it.” He holds out his arm and Peter happily dives into the place at Tony’s side, instantly accepting of Tony’s literal pat on the back for his decorating efforts.

“Oh, wow, Mister Rhodes,” Peter instantly perks up even more at the new arrival, brushing at his frankly adorable reindeer-patterned Christmas sweater and the now-curly bird’s nest of his hair. “It’s an honor. I mean, you’re War Machine, that’s—you’re awesome. Plus, Mister Stark has told me so much about you.”

“And Tony neglected to mention that his new favorite intern was…enhanced.” There’s a beat where Rhodey and Peter are both just kind of awkwardly shaking hands in silence, but then Rhodey breaks the hold, tilts his head, and looks between both Tony and Peter with a jolt. “Spider—wait a minute, _you’re_ the kid from Germany?”

“Not a kid,” Peter corrects under his breath, drowned out by Tony.

“Got it in one, Platypus! I figured it wasn’t worth hiding his identity, this time—better to just keep it in the family.”

“You’re saying Hogan knows about this?!”

“Oh, he and the kid are best friends forever,” Tony lies. Happy’s grown a soft spot for Peter just like the rest of them, but their interactions as far as Tony knows certainly still have the man’s crabby edge to them.

“I’m not sure I would say—“ Peter tries to correct, but the men bowl over him easily with their usual back and forth.

“This is rich. Spider-Man, a kid! Honestly, Tones, just when I think you can’t surprise me anymore—“

“Oh, cut the schtick, Rhodes, you’ll love him. Future MIT alma mater in the making—“

“Actually, I haven’t really decided—“ Peter tries again, but this time Pepper saves him the trouble, pulling Peter away.

“It’s a lost cause, honey,” she sighs. “They’ll egg each other on about nothing until the stories about Cabo start coming up.”

“What happened in—“ Peter stops himself. “Yeah, okay, gotcha.”

“We’re way past Cabo-shaming,” Tony says, following Pepper and Peter into the kitchen, both to refill his glass of champagne and also to steal a lick of icing from the bowl on the counter. “We’re up to Vegas shenanigans that I didn’t film… _unless I did_.” Tony waggles his eyebrows, eliciting no reaction at all from Rhodey.

“I hate you,” Rhodey replies, similarly swiping a lick of icing with his finger.

Pepper looks on at them both, a well-practiced glare reserved for their collective behavior. “Stop it, both of you.” She looks to Peter instead. “Help me out before these two eat it all?” she offers.

“Sure, Miss Potts.”

There wasn’t exactly a plan for the evening past a little bit of gift exchanging and dinner, so they end up all scrunched around the kitchen island, smearing buttercream onto little Christmas cookie shapes like some kind of factory line. They’re still waiting on Happy to arrive with the turkey anyway—the man’s got a whole thing with deep-frying that he swears by.

“What is that you were saying about tradition before, Pete?” Tony asks, particularly focused on giving his cookie tree little sugar ornaments in an inappropriate shape. “With the star?”

“Oh!” Peter practically jumps in his chair at the interruption, ruining a half-decent swipe of blue snowflake icing across his cookie. “Oh, right. Yeah, my—that was always the last thing we did, at the holidays. It was my Uncle Ben’s thing and, uh. Now it’s mine. I just felt like—if none of the other decorations were going to be done by you guys…someone should at least finish it off right. I mean, I know I don’t live here and all but—”

“I’m glad it was you, Pete.” Tony doesn’t let Peter finish. He’s aware that Ben’s death is still fresh for Peter—hell, it’s been over twenty years since his parents died and he _still_ gets a little tetchy around the holidays. Any traditions that Peter wants to bring to the table to honor his Uncle are okay with Tony. Encouraged, in fact. He’s sure May would be proud to know Peter’s bringing some of Ben’s light into their lives too. “I could have flown up there in the armor, I guess, but it doesn’t have that same…Spidey flair.”

Pepper takes the cookie Tony has painstakingly been making phallic out of his hands and swipes away his icing and sugar ball ornaments with her finger, shoving the evidence into her mouth. “Absolutely filthy, Miss Potts,” he comments, despite suspecting no one else realized what he was up to.

“Ew,” is Peter’s mild reaction, his nose scrunched.

“There’s a _child_ here!” is Rhodey’s typical overreaction, covering Peter’s eyes and making him laugh. “Don’t worry, kid, you have me to protect you now from these two and their _abhorrent_ amounts of PDA.”

“Oh, please.” Pepper rolls her eyes. “That’s nothing compared to what you and Linda from Accounting got up to at the Christmas Party in 2005.“

“Oh, you wanna pull receipts, Potts, because I happen to know—“

Peter watches the three of them bat old jokes back and forth with soft smile on his face, though Tony can’t imagine exactly _why_. Maybe it’s for the same reasons it warms Tony’s heart—just having his family around again. There were many nights spent shooting the shit over takeout back at the Malibu mansion, just like this, and their lives have become so crazy since he became Iron Man that they’ve become harder to organize.

Tony tries to apologize. “I’d like to say it’s not always like this, kiddie, but let’s be honest—“

Rhodey leans over to faux-whisper into Peter’s ear. “I’ve known Tony Stark for over two decades, and I have _all_ the dirt.”

“Oh?” replies the traitorous little squirt. “Like what?”

“He’s peed himself in the armor before.”

Peter’s eyes go enormous. “Mister Stark, _no_!”

“It has a filtration system! That’s what it’s for!” Tony attempts to defend, but he’s lost the kid to a fit of giggles at Tony’s expense.

In a snap decision, Tony reaches a hand into the bag of powdered sugar sitting on the counter and flings it directly at the back of Rhodey’s head, which is currently leaning to probably whisper something else that will ruin Peter’s image of Tony. 

At Rhodey’s open-mouthed look, Tony shrugs. “That’s for turning my kid against me.”

“Oh, he’s _yours_ now, is he?” Rhodey points out, and—okay, Peter Parker does make him too soft, because it’s obvious that Rhodey’s noticed, and Tony won’t stand for him lording it over Tony’s head forever. Tony throws more powdered sugar, and in turn fails to dodge the retaliating cookie thrown directly into his dress shirt, creating a smear of red and green on the white.

“Watch it,” Pepper warns, brandishing a piping bag a bit like a weapon pointed directly at where Tony was about to grab more sugar cookie ammunition. “I didn’t learn how to make what Buzzfeed described as the World’s Best Sugar Cookies just so you could throw them everywhere.”

“Pepper Potts reads Buzzfeed?” Peter murmurs, mostly to himself. “And she bakes? Wow.”

“I didn’t know Pepper Potts could bake _well_ ,” Rhodey quips, biting into one of his creations instead of throwing it.

Tony’s unsurprised when Rhodey is suddenly covered in another layer of powdered sugar.

**2019**

The first year after they got together, Tony went home with Pepper to Ohio for the holidays. Her mother was throughly unimpressed due to the multitude of stories she’d heard not only from the tabloids, but from her own daughter. 

However, as her mother tells it, Tony was found pacing around the living room mumbling to himself at three in the morning on Christmas Eve. He was strung out and sleep-deprived, bereft of a gift for Pepper, and desperate to get it right. He wanted to do the good boyfriend thing, but he was so unsure of himself that he’d practically begged for Miranda Potts’ advice on his knees.

(Okay, so maybe her mother had embellished a little bit, but Tony stopped bothering to fight her on the details. Pepper knew, quietly, he was ecstatic to have her mother’s approval, and would likely agree to any version of the story she wanted to tell to keep it.)

Suffice to say, she’s not shocked to find Tony vacuuming the living room floor at six in the morning on the day her Mother’s flight is supposed to arrive.

“I thought this is why we bought the roombas,” she shouts over the whir of the vacuum, also announcing her presence with a hip check to Tony’s side. He only jumps a few inches into the air and recovers without any dramatic sort of gestures towards his heart.

He turns off the vacuum, leaning against it. “No, that was to give FRIDAY something to command since I took away most of her toys with the downsize from the Compound. All she has here is us, DUM-E, and U to keep her company, and I felt bad about it.”

“Ah.” Pepper goes to start the coffee, but finds the sadly unsurprising sight of two used k-cups flung next to the machine, signaling that Tony’s only been furthering his decent into anxious cleaning madness. 

“I’m surprised Little Miss Morgan isn’t screaming,” she comments, because their daughter at only four months old takes to sleep like her father: barely and lightly. If there’s a noise, Morgan hears it, then wails for attention about it long enough that she no longer wants to go back to sleep. Tony was rarer to make jokes about Peter since the Snap, but he made a crack about checking her for enhanced-spider bites at one point and they’d both laughed themselves to tears over it.

“I put noise-cancelling headphones on her before I started,” Tony replies, suddenly behind her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her stomach. At her questioning glare, he raises his hands in defense instead. “Hey, FRIDAY said it was fine. Which means Google and its infinity pool of mommy blogs agreed.”

Pepper hears his mug being drained with an obnoxious slurp, then smacks his hand away from the k-cup rack before his fingers even reach beyond her shoulder with a gentle, “Take it easy, honey.”

“What are you, my doctor?”

“No, but I can get him on the phone, if that’s what you want. Or maybe Cho, if you’ve been missing her. If you wanna keep using your heart condition as ammunition, you have to cool off on the caffeine intake and take care of it.”

“Using it as ammunition,” Tony grumbles mockingly, as if he hadn’t started faking twinges in the beginning the moment Pepper started scheduling meetings for him again after everything with Obie. She’d only fallen for it once before she saw him in actual chest pain from the reactor and catalogued the difference.

“You know my mom doesn’t care about how clean the house is, right?” Pepper points out, her head buried in the fridge. Tony bought some weird gingerbread creamer at the store because of a digital coupon and it’s ruined her ability to drink her morning coffee black ever since. “She’s here for her granddaughter. Also, again—we have the roombas.”

“I just—“ Tony crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the kitchen island, focusing his gaze over her shoulder and out towards the lake. The views are one of the reasons they moved out here. It seems peaceful to him in a way the city isn’t, anymore. Something about the reduction of people being a reminder, she imagines. He keeps saying something about filling their backyard with enough animals to make a petting zoo for Morgan, and Pepper hasn’t decided how serious he’s being. “We haven’t seen her since everyone—I don’t know how she’ll react to me and—we don’t need another 2017 Incident.”

The 2017 Incident in question was less than a year after their self-imposed separation, and only a few months after their surprise engagement announcement.

Tony and Pepper didn’t stay apart for long, but the entire situation—mostly a few of Pepper’s tearier phone calls and a bad rumor or two in the press—put her mother directly in the camp of not trusting Tony’s sincerity and commitment to Pepper. 

Pepper had come to his adamant defense because she’d talked to him in the midst of his recovery after Siberia, had seen him doing the work with his therapist, and was so warmed by his rapid bonding and mentoring with Peter. It was unfair of her mother to hold the initial things that drove them apart against only him, or to compare those things to the person he was over a decade ago.

It’d been more than a small blow-up that had ruined Thanksgiving dinner and had taken until Pepper’s next birthday to work through in spurts of reconciling phone calls on both parts along with Tony’s public effort to stay at her side more firmly than ever. (If it was to prove his commitment to her mother, or Pepper, or to himself, she didn’t really know, but she appreciated it all the same.)

Then the Snap had happened, and any lingering resentment flew out the window in favor of their hurried calls to check that they were both _alive_. Then there had been Tony’s return from space and Pepper’s pregnancy so soon after. As far as Pepper could tell, the Potts-Stark clan was as back to their version of norm as they ever would be in this Post-Snap world, and her mother was completely over the moon about finally coming to see her granddaughter in person for Christmas.

Still, she understands that it’s making Tony nervous. It’s what Tony’s always been scared of. To him, family has been hard to find and terrifyingly easy to lose, especially now, after watching Peter dissolve in his arms and stepping back from attempting to help the Avengers, people he’d once considered part of his family. 

Meanwhile, Pepper is secure in the fact that her mother will make a fuss about missing their tiny shotgun lakeside wedding and Morgan’s birth, but at the end of the day, she’ll still end up at the dinner table around the holidays to voice that displeasure to anyone that will listen, still send them the beautiful monogrammed candles as a wedding present, and still boast about technically being a Stark to all of her Facebook friends.

She nudges Tony’s hands away from his armpits, burying herself against him instead. “We’re going to make it through this, Tony. _We_. This family—me, you, and Morgan—that’s what comes first, now. If my mother takes issue with that—which she _won’t_ —then that’s her problem. It will be us and our wonderful daughter and Rhodey and Happy, and we will have a great Christmas with or without her.”

“Also Nebula.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. She, uh. Asked what this whole Christmas thing was about, so I invited her too. Y’know. Spirit of the season and all.”

“My mom’s going to have Christmas dinner with an _alien_ ,” Pepper realizes out loud.

“Technically she’s an android-slash-alien.”

Upstairs, Morgan lets out a piercing wail to announce her return to consciousness.

Tony and Pepper groan tiredly in sync, Tony’s head resting on Pepper’s as it pushes deeper against his chest.

Things go well, at first. Pepper’s mother gets in by five o’clock PM, just enough time to have worked Tony’s caffeinated nervousness away and have it turn into a bit of sleep-deprivation. He’s crashed for a nap with Morgan against his chest, a college football game having put Tony to sleep, but not Morgan, who’s content to gurgle and gum on Tony’s hoodie strings while Pepper works on dinner.

Miranda Potts makes herself known before she reaches the door, crooning as always about how Happy's such a gentleman for picking her up at the airport and getting her bags, like they don’t pay Happy handsomely to do things like this on top of his security position.

“FRI, keep the risotto warm and turn off the TV,” Pepper commands as the steps on the porch get closer. She’s only just at the door to catch it before anyone can knock. “Hey, Mom.”

“Oh, honey, it’s so good to see you!” Her mom hugs her tightly, and Pepper thinks her arms are just as binding. The idea of losing her mother too—she’s so glad for the family they got to keep after the Decimation.

“You too.” She moves on to Happy, bringing him in for a hug with the arm that he isn’t carrying bags with. “Happy, can you set her up in the guest room upstairs, please? Dinner will be ready soon, and you’re the only one I trust to tell me if this recipe turned out right.” 

Happy smiles. She thinks he’s really grown into his new facial hair, though it does show more of his greying strands. “Sure thing, Pepper.”

“Quietly, though, okay?”

Her mother full-on _coos_. “Oh, is baby sleeping?”

“He was trying,” Tony groans, swinging Morgan up as he stands from the couch, causing her to let out a little peal of laughter. “Oh, sorry, other baby, too bad.”

“The man-child analogies are on the tip of my tongue…” Pepper hums, showering Morgan with kisses to keep up her sweet giggles.

Pepper’s mother rolls her eyes at them, which isn’t rare at all. “Both of you, honestly.”

“Say hi to mean ol’ Grandma Potts—“ Tony starts, lifting Morgan and swerving towards Pepper’s mom to avoid Pepper’s responding wrath. “Oh, you know I’m joking, Morguna. All of the Potts women are wonderful, effervescent beings, including you.”

“Effervescent—you’re really going for those vocabulary lessons early, huh?”

“No need, kid’s already a genius.” Tony plants a loud kiss against Morgan’s cheek before finally handing her over to her grandmother.

It goes on like that for a bit—Pepper and Happy finish dinner while Miranda fawns over her granddaughter in the living room. Happy steps out of the room to take a call, though, and things go a little downhill.

“She’s so _cute_!” Pepper’s mother hasn’t put Morgan down since she started holding her, and that doesn’t change as they gravitate towards the dining room table. “I’m kind of glad you don’t want more, I’m gonna spoil this only child absolutely rotten.”

She watches Tony’s face fall in a second—he’s trying to let it go, avoid making it a thing, but she knows. _Peter._

“Honey.” Pepper takes the baby from her mother in one breath and swiftly delivers Morgan into Tony’s arms by the next. “Why don’t you take Morgan upstairs for her feeding, okay? Maybe she’ll go to sleep with a little less, um, activity.”

Tony nods, adjusting Morgan against his chest, letting his daughter’s presence ground him like Pepper knew it would. He’s still wet in the eyes, though, and she knows he hates this fragility, that some days he can’t even think about Peter without sending himself right back into that moment with a panic attack. Better to get him out fast. “I’ll warm a bottle, you go ahead.”

Again, Tony’s silent, but he follows her gentle push to his shoulder, ascending the stairs and letting his focus stay on Morgan instead of whatever scene is playing behind his eyelids concerning Peter.

“I’m not stupid, Virginia,” her mother states halfway through watching Pepper warm one of the bottles of breastmilk from the fridge, crossing her arms in that stubborn way that always reminds Pepper where she got it from. “What was that all about?”

“It’s no—“

“Don’t start that with me. I’m not those press people. You can’t lie to me.”

Pepper eyes her mother shrewdly. “We don’t lie to the press.” Mentally, she amends, _that much_. “I just don’t think it’s any of your business.” And maybe she’s a little more protective of Tony, after everything, or maybe she always was. His PTSD is nothing new, it’s just growing and changing with their relationship like it always has. She’s certainly had her own share of nightmares about losing Tony or waking up covered in the flames of Extremis again.

Her mother sighs, a heaving thing that Pepper recognizes from her youth. “That’s not—I just don’t want to say the wrong thing…again.” She reaches out a hand, stopping Pepper from her anxious twisting at the bottle. “Did you two—was there another baby, before…?” Her mother doesn’t have to finish the sentence for Pepper to catch the implication of a miscarriage.

“Oh, no. That’s—no.” Weirdly, though, it does feel like that, in some ways. Peter knew Tony better, and yet she feels like she lost the kid too. She lost the chance to know this child Tony’s been grieving over for the last year, that he’d loved, that she was coming to love through Tony’s stories, the voicemails left for Happy, the way he’d crafted a place for himself in their family so suddenly and just _fit_.

“Okay, good, that’s—good.” Her mother squeezes her hand.

“His name was Peter,” Pepper starts. “Peter Parker.” 

She puts down the bottle and moves over to the sink, bringing down the black frame proudly displayed on the shelf. She’d argued for a different placement, at first, but Tony’s come to do a lot of the household chores while Pepper’s doing SI business, so he probably spends more time at the sink than other places the picture could be anyway.

“Tony was mentoring him, before.” That’s how everyone defines time, these days. Before and after, no other description needed. “They were close. It wasn’t just at SI—he came up to the compound, joined us at the Tower for Christmas.”

“Tony and a teenager,” her mother muses, tapping a knuckle on the frame. “Hard to imagine. Though I guess him with a baby would have blown my mind a few years ago too.” She prods Pepper’s side at that, gaining the smile she was going for with the comment. Pepper can agree—she and Tony hadn’t talked about having kids until suddenly they were. She always assumed Peter had more to do with that than any kind of premonition Tony had before their conversation on the day he went into space.

“They were a lot alike, I think. I never got the whole story, but Peter went through a lot, including losing his parents. I think it helped Tony to help someone else like him, especially after everything with the other Avengers. He wanted to nurture Peter into something good.”

“Ah.”

“What?”

“He was one of those heroes too, then.”

“I didn’t—“ Pepper forgot she who she was talking to, this whole time. The woman who could catch Pepper before she ever stuck her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. No wonder she’d always had such a similar intuition with Tony. “Fine, yes. On his way, at least. But then Tony—they both went to space, and Tony’s the only one that came back. It took Peter longer to…Tony blames himself, and it’s taking time to work through. That’s all.”

“Poor thing.” Her mom’s response to learning about Peter—to seeing what Tony’s going through—assures Pepper more than anything else that there’s no family drama to worry about between them. It’s not pity, just warmth. The kind of familial love she’s always extended towards Pepper, sturdy and strong no matter what.

“Here, give me that,” her mother insists, taking the bottle from the counter. “I’ll go. You finish with dinner. I’ll make sure the little one gets to sleep.”

“Mom, are you sure—“

“Yes, Virginia,” she insists. “Believe it or not, your husband and I do actually get along when you’re not around.”

Without letting Pepper argue another word, her mother disappears up the stairs.

**2040**

“I’m gonna wake him up.”

“Please don’t.”

“No, Dad, listen—“

“It’s not funny.”

“It’s hilarious.”

“To you. Because you’re literally one of the only people on earth that can sneak up on Spider-Man. Because you psychologically conditioned him not to perceive you as a threat.”

“I’m not sure that’s how his tingle-thing works.”

“You know he hates when people call it that.”

“I thought I was Daddy’s little girl. You’re supposed to be on my side! This is bullshit.”

“Don’t say bullshit, honey. Little ears.”

“Little ears that want me to wake up their father. He’s missing out on Christmas!”

Tony sighs. “Fine. Wake your brother up. But if he webs you to the wall because he’s half-asleep, I’m not getting the dissolving agent. You’ll just hang there, and I’ll eat all of your mom’s pecan pie by myself tonight.”

Morgan contemplates him for a second with what little adult wisdom she’s gained since she turned eighteen. Now twenty-one, she’s only become slightly more cautious before barreling into whatever ideas pop into her head. “D’you really think he brought the web shooters? To Christmas dinner?”

Tony’s responding look speaks for itself. The reason Peter is passed out asleep on the couch right now is precisely because he never seems to take any time off. Tony’s not surprised—his twenties, thirties, forties…okay, yeah, until he hit fifty, essentially, he didn’t get a lot of sleep, either. The difference is that Peter is doing the hero thing on top of the Stark Industries thing on top of the parenting thing, and his friends and family can only help so much because Peter is incredibly stubborn.

So, Peter inhaled their family breakfast, promptly crashed while everyone else was still finishing, and now the little ones are getting antsy about opening presents, no longer distracted by playing with MJ, Pepper, and May in the snow.

“Worth it,” Morgan gauges, setting her stance as if for a marathon before taking the few steps from where Tony is sitting in the armchair to physically dive-bomb on top of Peter on the couch. “Wakey-wakey, Spider-butt!”

Peter lets out a groan, taking Morgan’s weight full-force from his dead sleep. “That’s my spleen,” he rasps out. “Oh, crap, no, that’s my bladder. God, ow, why—“

“Whiniest superhero _ever_ ,” Morgan complains, jostling Peter back and forth like a rag doll. “C’mon, Petey, I want to do presents.”

“How old are you again?” Peter asks. “Cause you sound a lot like my four year old. Way less cute, though.”

At that, Morgan goes in for the noogie, and despite the fact that the kid can lift an entire car with one hand, Peter lets her.

It’s not long ago that their roles were reversed: Peter teasing Morgan, carrying her around the room on his shoulders and spinning until she practically puked, filling the halls with their stomping feet before he, Pepper, or May were even considering getting out of bed on Christmas morning.

It’s a good change, in a way. Back in the early days, all Tony worried about was the two of them getting along. Morgan was used to being an only child, and then the hallowed superhero brother from her bedtime stories suddenly came back to life. Recovering from saving the universe, and all Tony wanted was for his kids—god, wasn’t that good to think—to get along. 

Now they’re here, alive, both of them at home and his newer worries are coming back to him at the sight. Peter and MJ only ever come up to the lake house to visit with their kids as it is. Morgan will finish her first degree at college next semester, and then what? Pepper is considering retirement from Stark Industries all together—she probably won’t want to move back into the city. Morgan has been talking non-stop about taking some kind of international pre-grad student sabbatical with her friends. They’ll be left with an empty nest, and he’ll still never see the grandkids enough, and—

“Aren’t you gonna do something about that?” Pepper asks, startling him out of his thoughts with a press of her hand through his grey hair. It’s been longer than he thought—Morgan is now the one being tortured, this time with the threat of a wet-willie against her head.

“He’s enjoying it too much,” MJ says, seating herself on one side of the armchair. “Tony Stark Starts Children's Fight Club, I can see the headline now.”

“You know one of those children is your husband, right?” Tony points out.

“Yeah,” MJ says the same way that she calls Peter _nerd_ or _loser_. She’s a softie on the inside, as Tony had correctly guessed upon first meeting her.

“Grandpa, Grandpa!” comes one of the two high-pitched voices Tony has come to love hearing that monicker from. (He’d tried to enforce the whole _they can just call me Tony, no, not Mister Stark, Peter, or I will kill you_ , thing, but that didn’t work out when Benjamin Parker’s first word was Grandpa and Tony had cried at the videographic proof for twenty minutes straight. Now he’s simply resigned himself to being old, but adored.)

Marie Parker bolts into his lap in point-four seconds, missing her snow boots but still wearing her jacket and hat, therefore spreading the cold wetness all over her onto Tony. “We made a snowman, but we made it look like you!”

“Like me?” he parrots in that infectious kid-toned way.

“Mhm! Benny wanted to do Iron Man, but I told him that _you’re_ Iron Man, so we _had_ to give it a smiley face. He didn’t like it even through Grandma and Mommy told me I could.”

“She ruined it,” Ben pouts, seven years old and just sure the world is awful because of his little sister’s mere existence. He has the maturity to have removed his snow clothes completely before coming inside, but not yet enough to concede that his little sister is just being four years old and not out to ruin his Christmas specifically. “That’s not how the mask really looks!”

“Maybe,” Tony grants, running a hand through Ben’s curly hair. It's similar to Peter’s when he was young, according to May. Marie’s spring curls more match her mother’s, and he’s gotten pretty masterful at braiding them, lately. “But your sister is right—I _am_ Iron Man. So I say _both_ of you kids did an awesome job, and I bet when I go look at your masterpiece, I’ll be right.”

“How about we go take off your snow clothes, kiddo?” May ends their little spat by taking her great-niece from Tony’s arms, bouncing her off towards the coatracks. “Then we can do presents!” Marie lets out a happy little squeal at that, and Tony gratefully accepts the sweater Pepper offers him for his now freezing upper body.

“Hey.” Tony pulls Ben closer by the shoulder before he can sulk off. “Don’t be too hard on your sister over a snowman, kiddo. If you want to make a model of my old suits that’s accurate, how about you and I go into the garage with your dad later?”

“Really?!” 

Ben is easy to win over with a good project, though in some way, all of the kids have been. Peter was fine to get into the nitty gritty of building bots, but he’d always been torn between that and chemistry, resulting in the slew of medical-related Stark Industries products that Peter has had a hand in. Morgan was always content to watch Tony and Peter in the garage, but she ended up prone to late nights spent coding, keen to tweaking at FRIDAY until she no longer resembled anything close to what Tony first created.

Ben, however, seems perfectly happy to spend his time taking things apart like Tony. Genetics have nothing to do with it on the Parker side, but he’s still happy to be able to connect with the kids doing the things that used to leave him isolated and alone.

“I promise. Now, go save your dad from Aunt Morgan. It’s looking pretty fierce over there.”

Somehow, Peter and Morgan have devolved into a complex variant of Rock, Paper, Scissors to settle their dispute, but words like _thermonuclear explosive_ are being demonstrated with increasingly intricate hand gestures and a rebuttal that sounds a lot like “I use time travel and stop you from blowing me up!” despite the fact that they’ve proven _that’s not how that works_.

“Grandpa told me to come save you,” Ben announces, worming his way into Peter’s lap. He’s small and wiry, a clear copy of Peter but for his mother’s more blunt demeanor.

“Good job, bud, I’m saved,” Peter declares, wrapping himself around Ben. “I’m sufficiently shielded from Momo’s attacks.”

“Come to the dark side,” Morgan intones, echoing Darth Vader as she attempts to pry Ben from Peter’s grasp with tickling fingers. “We have juice pops!”

“Ahaha—run, Ben, run!”

“Okay, okay, enough, both of you. This weird sibling bonding ritual where you torture each other is officially over,” Tony declares, standing to pluck Ben from Peter’s lax arms and planting himself between Peter and Morgan. “There. Tony and Benny meat shield—fear our power!” He raises Ben’s arms up, but Ben’s smile takes away anything even mildly menacing about it.

“Too…cute…” Peter groans dramatically, holding his arms out while pretending to be pulled away by some invisible force. “Morgan, get out while you can! Must…hug…”

“Oh, no! They’ve gotten me too!” Morgan yells, attaching herself to Tony’s side, the crown of her hair tickling his nose as she awkwardly wraps around both Tony and Ben’s torsos.

On his other side, Peter hones in, his arms wrapping over Tony’s shoulders and rocking the mass of them around almost nauseatingly.

It takes Tony all of two seconds to think about the fact that it used to be _Morgan_ in his lap instead of his granddaughter, _Peter_ about to head off to college for the first time instead of Morgan, and he used to bother dyeing his hair instead of just leaving it all grey, god, who gave the world permission to keep spinning this fast? 

“Okay, yes, I love you both very much, can we be done with this now?”

“Look, everyone, it’s Ebenezer Stark,” MJ calls, exposing what he’s feeling by calling attention to his avoidance techniques, the traitor. (He’s going to get her and Peter under _all_ of the mistletoe later.)

“I knew we shouldn’t have watched _A Christmas Carol_ last night,” Tony sighs. “Call 2005, they want their headline back.”

MJ pauses at that. “What, seriously?”

Pepper shrugs, taking his place on the armchair with a lapful of granddaughter. “SI donated a million dollars less to St. Jude’s than the year before. Ignoring the _extra million_ that went to the local women’s shelter instead.”

“Wow, looks like someone’s heart needed to grow a few sizes.”

“That’s the Grinch, M,” Peter says, but it’s muffled into Tony’s shoulder as he and Morgan have apparently decided that group hug time is, in fact, not over.

“Grandpa’s not the Grinch!” Marie bolts from Pepper’s lap and crash lands into Peter’s, easily wrapping around her brother and patting at Tony’s side rather than his back, as if to console him from the insult.

“At the very least, he’s clearly not _anymore_ ,” May teases to Pepper, referring to the dog-pile of children attached to his person at the moment.

“Everyone off of me in five or we’re burning all of the presents like the great MIT bonfire of 1989!” Tony groans. Ben and Marie take the threat seriously, groaning “Noo!” as they hop away to the tower of gifts surrounding the Christmas tree. 

As the younger kids start distributing gifts, though, Morgan and Peter simply readjust themselves, both of their heads moving to his shoulders. Okay, so maybe this isn’t the first time he’s shown some anxiety about both of them leaving the nest soon.

“Love you, Dad,” Morgan says, pressing a kiss to Tony’s cheek. 

Peter takes Tony’s hand, squeezing their fingers together. “Love you.”

Tony remembers, once again, above all else—he is a very, very lucky man.

“I love you guys too,” he says, pressing a kiss to both Morgan and Peter’s heads, his arms over their shoulders bringing them in closer. “Merry Christmas.”

\+ **2024**

Peter walks into the Stark household on Christmas morning, and is immediately embraced by a complete stranger. Not the weirdest thing to happen or the first time it’s happened—a lot of people get really excited after Spider-Man saves their life.

Still, it’s not normal for anyone to be at the lake house that Peter doesn’t know. “Uh,” is Peter’s elegant response.

“Miranda Potts. Pepper’s mother,” Tony supplies, arms crossed and watching the scene with an amused grin.

“Oh,” Peter continues, bereft, still caught in the surprise hug. Pepper’s mother is tall just like her daughter, so even without heels Peter has to push up on his toes a little to see over her shoulder. “Um. Hi?”

Pepper’s mother lets him go, and not-as-surprisingly-as-it-used-to-be, Tony moves in next, wrapping Peter in a tight hug despite the fact that they saw each other just last week. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Hey, Mister Stark.”

“Look at you two!” Pepper’s mother practically coos, and god, Peter never had a grandmother, but the heat of his cheeks makes him think it’s a lot like this. “So precious, no wonder you’re so proud to have a kid like him, huh?”

“Oh, I’m not his—“ Peter can feel his face getting warmer. “We’re not—he’s not my—Miss Potts, that’s—“

She scoffs. “ _Miss Potts_ —please, honey, call me Grandma, same as Morgan.”

“But I’m really not—“

“Peter.” The elder Potts’ look becomes more serious. “He saved the universe to bring you back. To me, that means you’re his kid in every way that matters. Not to mention how he wouldn’t stop bragging on you while you were gone.”

“He—he did?” Of course Peter knew that Tony missed him. The way they’d hugged on the battlefield, the days Tony woke after his recovery, missing an arm and asking for him in the hospital room…it just still felt odd—displacing, honestly, to think that for five years, people Peter knew and cared about lived a life without him.

“Mmhm. In particular, he mentioned you were quite the hero, _Spider-Man_.”

For a moment, Peter just sort of hangs there with his mouth open, but he moves his gaze over to Tony. Tony’s never outed his identity, not to anyone. He’s pretty sure some of the other Avengers _still_ just think he’s Tony’s intern despite seeing him on the battlefield.

Tony holds up his hands in defense. “That one’s on Pep.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Miss Potts promises. “I have enough to brag about when my son-in-law is Iron Man, don’t you think?”

“Pete, honey, you’re blocking the door—oh.“ May calls behind him, having taken a weirdly long time getting everything from the car with Happy.

“And you must be the infamous May Parker,” Miss Potts grabs one of the bags of presents from May’s hand. “C’mon, Pepper and I just opened a bottle of wine in the kitchen, you deserve it.”

May gives Peter a questioning look, but at his shrug, she follows Miss Potts off into the house, leaving Peter, Tony, and Happy at the door in an awkward silence.

“She’s…nice.”

“She is,” Tony replies with a genuine smile, which actually kind of surprises him. Not that he knows much about the dynamics of their family, but at his last Christmas with the Starks, there was some tension revolving around Pepper’s mother, according to Rhodey.

Accompanying the rapid pounding of feet on the stairs comes Morgan’s call of “Petey!” In seconds, Peter has an armful of Morgan, babbling away. “Nobody told me you were here! Are you excited about Christmas? Did you bring me good presents? I got you something _super_ good, Daddy told me so.”

“I just got here, Mo, you didn’t miss a thing,” Peter answers. “I am excited to spend Christmas with you guys, but you’ll just have to wait and see about your presents.” He leans into her ear, faux-whispering, “I wrapped yours myself with _glitter paper_.”

Tony groans. “Peter, _you didn’t_. We’ll never clean that stuff up.”

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” Peter shouts, carrying Morgan into the kitchen to join his aunt and the other Potts women, Tony shaking his head as he trails behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this fic!
> 
> It's actually lowkey dedicated to my grandmother, who we lost this Thanksgiving. It's been a long, slow journey watching the woman who made every holiday special get lost in the fog of dementia and Alzheimer's, so I really enjoyed honoring that by making a big old Christmas fic full of traditions that she made great for me every year.
> 
> But it's also highkey dedicated to my giftee, so I hope you loved it, as I hope for anyone else who read this. It got me in the Christmas spirit for sure. :)
> 
> As always, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are appreciated! I'll see my fellow IronDad fans soon--I have two more fics coming for the IronDad Fic Exchange, so keep an eye out!


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